New for academic year 2024-2025
Beginning Fall 2024, the Global Contexts requirement replaces the Global Understanding requirement. All students admitted Fall 2024 and beyond will be required to complete a Global Contexts course.
Students admitted prior to Fall 2024 can use either a Global Understanding or a Global Contexts course to satisfy the Global Understanding requirement for Mason Core.
Global Contexts
The goal of the Global Contexts (GC) Mason Core requirement is to enable students to explore global connections through a disciplinary lens and to understand how global systems have created both interdependence and inequalities that engaged citizens must understand in order to work toward an equitable and sustainable future.
Learning Outcomes:
Upon completing a Global Contexts course, students will be able to:
- Identify and explain how patterns of global connections across nations and/or cultures have shaped societies to create interdependence and inequality.
- Use a disciplinary lens to demonstrate knowledge of how at least one nation and/or culture participates in or is affected by global contexts.
- Apply an understanding of one’s own positionality within a globally interdependent and unequal world to analyze solutions to global problems.
Required: One 3 credit course
Submitting a Course for Global Contexts?
For more information on positionality as it is applied to learning outcome 3, please refer to this infographic or watch the provided video.
For closed captions, access the video transcript.
Course Approval Process
Courses can take a depth approach (examination of one particular region or society) and/or a breadth approach (comparative examination of different regions or societies), but the Mason Core proposal must clearly articulate what approach to Global Contexts the course takes and how it fulfills Mason Core Global Contexts learning outcomes.
Please note that all current Global Understanding courses will need to be resubmitted for Global Contexts approval, and not all current Global Understanding courses will meet the new Global Contexts outcomes without substantial revision. To help with the revision process, we strongly recommend faculty review the course proposal resources.
To submit a course for the Global Contexts category, please complete the proposal worksheet provided below. Submit the completed proposal worksheet, the course syllabus, and all related assignments to CIM for Mason Core Committee review.
Review the course submissions guide for a more detailed overview.